Take-Away Business Card Sample

This is my Take-Away Business Card Sample for Bao, a Korean Barbeque fast food outlet. After producing the brand palette, patterns, logo and choosing a typeface for Bao, designing the business card was relatively straightforward. I created all the graphic elements as vector, so crisp details are guaranteed. I’d already made sure all brand colours where reproducible in print so the colour would be spot on.

A hi-res mock-up of an essential stationery set created by Design Advocate
Taking your business seriously? It really is essential.

Standard Business Card size of 84mm x 55mm

This is a standard format business card for the UK market, so is 84mm x 55mm in your hand. You get to this final size by trimming a slightly larger printed version. To make this possible, I add what’s known as a ‘bleed’ around the edge when I’m creating the design. After printing and trimming you’ve got that perfect edge to edge colour. I made this mock up as a sample for the client, to give them an idea of what the cards would look like, so don’t try calling the number!

The landscape version of my Take-Away Business Card sample works particularly well with the bao doughy buns on it. Also the pattern sets of the images perfectly, providing enough texture and colour without competing for attention. I use the same pattern on both cards, either fully black or fully white. What makes them work differently is using a ‘Soft Light’ layer blend mode. For patterns, I will often use this blend mode as it gives a subtle darkening or lightening effect. To create a subtle shading layer in Photoshop I use this technique all the time. The only difference is I start with a 50% gray and then paint in my highlights and shadows with white and black respectively. More on that another time!

A sample of a business card mock up created by freepik and used by design advocate
Simple but effective.

Using mock-ups to present ideas to clients

I ended up heavily modifying the mock I used from Freepik. As with a lot of these freebies they are close but not exactly what you want. I remade all the reflections and shadows as the background wasn’t editable. Next, I then added a perspective distorted, smart image for the background. I was thinking ahead and intending to use this mock up again and wanted an easily editable background. Got to love smart images in Photoshop.

I’m really pleased with the final design, it’s bold and eye catching with a warm and friendly vibe – perfect for the Korean Barbeque.

Take-Away Business Cards designed by Design Advocate, showing a stack of 4 cards
Card Anyone?